Podcast: Colin Le Sueur on ‘Black Mountain Side’

One of the best parts of running a horror podcast is casting a wide net with your guests - moving outside of the regular assortment of film critics and filmmakers to view the genre from new angles. This week, we're breaking new ground with our first tabletop roleplaying game designer. Colin Le Sueur is the author of several TTRPGs, including Midnight of the Century, a new game based heavily on Chris Carter's short-lived Millennium series. And in that vein of cosmic horrors, he has picked Black Mountain Side, a Canadian horror movie that blends the existential and the folkloric in equal measure.

Nobody becomes a paleoanthropologist to get rich - but then again, nobody becomes a paleoanthropologist thinking they’ll find proof of an ancient civilization in a part of the world it doesn’t belong. That’s the case for the research team of Black Mountain Side, who unearth evidence of an ancient structure that might just make them famous. But soon after the building is unearthed, strange things begin to happen around the campsite. What starts with the disappearance of a few workers soon evolves into a wave of hallucinations and violence, and before long, the output realizes they’ve dug up more than just tools. The first feature from Canadian filmmaker Nick Szostakiwskyj, Black Mountain Side is the kind of slow-burn cosmic horror that would make fans of John Carpenter proud.

In this short excerpt, Le Sueur weighs in on the film's sudden switch from slow burn to graphic violence in the third act, and whether or not Black Mountain Side escalates that tension successfully.

Those moments are really shocking, because it's been such a slow burn up to that point. And then, obviously, shit goes to hell when, on the last day, everyone starts gunning for each other. So yeah, I think the slow burn pays off. Those kinds of reveals are really effective - I think part of the reason is because it's in daytime.

The Black Mountain Side episode of the Certified Forgotten podcast with Colin Le Sueur is now available to stream on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, or the podcast platform of your choice.